


Two's Company

by Rhube



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Doubles, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multiple Doctors (Doctor Who), Oral Sex, Porn with minimal Plot, Robots, Self-cest, Slash, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-29
Updated: 2015-04-29
Packaged: 2018-03-26 09:06:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3845170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhube/pseuds/Rhube
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor awakes to find himself confronted by an exact duplicate of himself. But is either one of them really the Doctor?</p><p>(Note: first chapter is pretty tame (for Doctor/Doctor slash), but becomes pretty steamy.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Two's Company

The Doctor woke up.

At first he couldn’t open his eyes — they were glued shut with sleep, and he rubbed frantically at them to remove the gritty residue. He wasn’t sure exactly what it was that put him so ill at ease, but to wake up so had filled him with panic.

Except that he didn’t remember going to sleep.

Well, it wasn’t exactly that, because he could never seem to remember the exact moment when his waking mind gave itself up to dreams and unconscious wanderings, but the last thing he could remember... the last thing he remembered didn’t seem to involve anything, well, appropriate. He’d been on a street with Turlough. A bazaar. Bright and colourful — although a bit dusty for his tastes. Turlough was reaching out towards a dark purple fruit, asking the seller what kind it was, and then...

Here.

Nothing in between. No bed. No dizziness. No knock to the head. Not even really a sense that time had passed. Just one moment he was there, and the next...

It was very odd.

Once he’d freed his eyes of the gunk, he opened them and sat up to take in his surroundings.

It was dark and cold. The surface beneath his hands — that he had been lying on — was hard, unyeilding, some kind of stone, and—

His eyes came into focus upon the figure before him, and he made a sharp intake of breath.

“Hello,” said the figure, warilly, in a voice both like, and unlike his own.

 _Your voice, perhaps, as it sounds from the outside_ , he thought, and shuddered.

The man was tall and blond, the hair falling in a one-sided fringe over his eyes. His trousers were striped red and pale yellow, and — and everything was the same — right down to the crooked teeth. His hand rose instinctively to feel his own, as though they might have changed, as though he could tell just by touch some small difference that would make it less... well, less exact a match.

“Hello,” he said in response, unable, for that moment, to find anything else to say.

The figure nodded, as though he had said something intelligible, stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked down. Thinking. Avoiding his gaze. To see his own mannerisms mimicked so perfectly was profoundly disturbing, almost worse than the appearance. It felt like a caricature, but the part of him that squirmed to see it knew it was not.

“Disquieting, isn’t it?” the other man said. “When you were just lying there — still like that — I had hoped…” he left the thought hanging. “But you’re not, are you?” He was pacing slowly now, hands still in pockets, still avoiding the Doctor’s gaze. It wasn’t a large cell, though, and after two turns he halted and addressed the Doctor again. “Can you remember anything before you got here?” he asked, that note of wariness back, the quiet tone that perhaps only he would have recognised as expressing how deeply troubled the other man was.

“Well, yes,” he responded. “Some things, of course. But not immediately before I got here — if that’s what you mean.”

His double looked up, his face pale, “Then you do remember?”

“I’m not quite sure what you…”

“You have memories — before now. I mean, you…” his brow furrowed and his mouth worked, trying to express something, but finally settling for: “Oh dear.”

“So you — you don’t?”

“Not a thing, no,” the other man said, retreating to the slab of rock opposite that might have been intended as a bunk.

“Do you know who you are?” the Doctor asked. It was not beyond the realms of possibility that this was actually himself — a future self, perhaps, but not from very far into the future. It could explain their memories — it could explain a lot.

But his double was shaking his head. “No, not a clue. I suppose you do, of course?”

“Well, yes,” he replied, “I’m the Doctor.”

“You are?” said the double. “How nice for you.”

“Do you — do you know what you are, then?"

He gave a harsh bark of laughter. “Well, I’m not you am I?”

He could feel the other man’s distress — didn’t want to, couldn’t help it. He sounded angry, yet in control; but, looking into this living mirror, the Doctor knew different.

“Well, now,” he said, sliding off the stone bunk, taking a few steps forward, and then pausing, uncertain. “Well, now — we don’t know that, and — and look,” the Doctor said, fixing on a practical distraction. “One thing’s clear: we have to get out of here.”

The other man pursed his lips, then nodded. “Yes. I suppose you're right.”

“Well, then,” said the Doctor. “You were awake before me; did you investigate the cell?”

Identical blue eyes met his in askance. “Of course — what do you take me for?”

“And?”

“And the walls are solid stone, with no holes of any kind for ventilation. The air gets in through that small barred window in the door — the bars of which you’ll note appear quite new and secure — and the guard on the other side of the door is a huge mechanoid that seems quite immune to distraction. If you can think of something I’ve missed I’ll be over-joyed, but I’ve rather come to the opinion that they thought this through reasonably well.”

“Whoever ‘they’ are,” the Doctor murmured.

“Quite.”

Without any real hope of success the Doctor made a slow rotation — looking at the door, the place where the rock-slab bunks met the floor, the thick, new looking bars… he had to admit, if his double was missing something, then he was too. He let out a deep breath and sank down next to the other man.

They sat in silence for a minute, but the Doctor couldn’t go unoccupied for long, especially with such an unsettling curiosity so close at hand.

“Well, let’s have a look at you then,” he said.

His double stiffened and seemed about to object, but then slumped in defeat. “Yes, I suppose you better had,” he said.

The Doctor tried to think of some kind of comforting words. To see himself (or near as) give in like that made his skin prickle — but none came, and so he began his examination. First with the head, which seemed easiest. He ran his fingers along the man’s scalp, lifting up the fine blond hair. It looked real enough, even this close. Too late he realised they hadn't firmly established that this wasn’t a later version of himself, but it came to nothing. If he’d needed proof of that, there it was. The man sat patiently enduring his ministrations as before.

The hair looked real, right down to the tiny down-like hairs of his face. And the teeth — for one moment he felt the impulse to reach out and touch them, to verify that they really did feel the same as his own had, moments before; but that would have been too invasive, too objectifying — from just looking he could see here what he saw in the mirror every morning, complete with moist, pink gums, and even taste-buds on the tongue. If this wasn’t a man after all, it was a work of sheer genius and attention to detail.

Next he examined the hands. Fingers long and graceful — the nails more evenly trimmed perhaps, but… He turned them over, traced their identical life-lines — until the hand was snatched back reflexively. Looking up to his face, the Doctor saw a gentle blush spread as his double excused himself by saying: “It tickled,” and was torn between fascinated admiration for the skill the creation of such a being must have taken. Reflected embarrassment flushed his own cheeks with heat. Identifying with this other-him was no difficulty at all, it seemed. But how to tell them apart…

The Doctor laid his hands on the other man’s chest, one on each side, wondering if he would feel the beat… and there it was. Dual hearts. It could be faked of course, but… “Still,” he murmured, lost in his own thought, forgetting the man whose body he was examining so thoroughly, for now. “Still, one can’t be sure from that.” He began unbuttoning the double’s shirt — would the illusion go all the way down (if it was an illusion at all)?

Warm hands caught his and moved them firmly away. “Stop.”

The Doctor looked up, chagrined to see the other man’s eyes glassy with tears; to feel the tremble in his grip.

“Stop,” he repeated. “I don’t want to know.” The Doctor felt his own face redden now. “Oh,” he said, “I’m so sorry. So sorry. I just—”

“Yes, I know,” his double said, releasing his hands and looking away. “It’s exactly what I would have done, I’m sure.”

To see such distress writ so clearly on his own features was too much. He drew the other man awkwardly to himself and held him. He was stiff, at first, rigid with the pain he was trying to hold in; and then he felt the tiny, soundless jerks, which after a moment the Doctor knew for his double sobbing.

It was dumb-founding — hearts-stopping. To be in such a position — to be practically holding himself.

He found his voice at last. “Please,” he said, taking the man’s head in his hands and forcing him to look up, shivering once more at the sensation of running his fingers through his own hair on someone else’s head. “Please, it will be alright. I will make this OK.”

The words felt flat and useless — sitting so close to him now, their faces bare inches from each other, the heat of the other man — another him so close – and that prickling flush that ran through him in response to the bizarre sensation of looking into his own eyes.

Their foreheads pressed together, and he only meant to draw the other man back into his embrace — to sooth him if he could — but with their skin touching, face to face, and the other man’s hand on his neck (so like his own) a heat rose that was quite unexpected. He wasn’t sure which one of them initiated it, but their lips were touching, and he wanted to draw his double in – into himself — to enfold him in security, and at the same time eliminate his unsettling presence by absorption.

And it seemed like every touch was heightened by the knowledge that it was performed by hands, lips, tongue exactly like his own. Hearts building to a frantic, absorbing pace, the Doctor found that now he was the one who was being undressed. Trembling fingers gave way to impatience, and he heard the pop of torn threads as the buttons were ripped free, and his own hands ran down his chest, under the fabric of his shirt and around the back, pulling him closer. He could feel that urgency mirrored in the other — to absorb him — pull him in — to be the one in command — the real Doctor.

And somehow in his security that that role belonged to him he let the other man take charge, bending him back onto the stone surface until it lay cool against his back, and he felt the other’s tongue running up from his navel to his neck, making him pant and moan, trying not to think that this was surely unnatural — surely in some sense wrong; but somehow that thought only added to the excitement — the pleasure. He gave himself up to it, and then—

The door swung open. Another body was pushed in. Dirty, dishevelled, sprawling on the floor… but also blond, just like them; blond and tall and slender, with striped trousers and a beige jacket with a sprig of celery pinned to the lapel. They froze in horror — at what they were doing, what they would be seen to have done; and by a thought more frightening still: what if neither of them were the Doctor at all?

The man on the floor heaved himself to his knees and swept the hair back from his face. He stared at them in confusion for a moment, and then his eyes went wide as he came to understand what he was seeing.

“Oh, good gracious no!” he said, scrambling back against the other stone bunk in repulsion. “What — what have you done?”

The heavy door slammed shut.


	2. Three's Just Hot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor reacts to walking in on two doubles of himself making out.
> 
> Who is the real Doctor? How did they get here? How will they escape, and what will they do then?

He couldn’t believe what he was seeing: frozen in tableau, two perfect images of himself. Familiar hands held familiar wrists against cold stone in an impossible grip. Both were breathing heavily, and returning his gaze in shock.  
  
“Oh, good gracious no!” he exclaimed, recoiling; scrabbling backwards until he connected with stone and could go no further. “What — what have you done?” he asked of his captors, but the door slammed shut against his question.  
  
Hauling himself to his feet, the Doctor gripped the bars of the window and called out to the retreating guard-drones. “What is this? What are you meaning to do to me?” They turned the corner without looking back.  
  
The head of the mechanoid directly outside rotated slowly; it tapped the bottom of the window with what appeared to be quite a sizeable weapon. The Doctor pressed his lips together, “Yes, alright,” he said, letting go of the bars. Turning, he faced the unsettling pair of men.  
  
They had disengaged from one another and now stood side by side, faces pink and flushed; whether with shame or exertion he didn’t like to think. He pressed against the door, steadying himself with its solidity; wishing he could retreat further.  
  
“What are you? What is this?” he asked.  
  
The two exchanged a glance, sending a shiver through him. To have his own eyes staring back at him was disconcerting, but to have them look away and meet each other… it was like heightened voyeurism — to be looking in on himself looking at himself.  
  
The leftward one, braces hanging loosely by his waist, had been trying to hold his now-buttonless shirt together, but he dropped his hands to his sides as he turned back. “I might well ask the same of you,” he said.  
  
The Doctor straightened his jacket and stepped forward. “I’m the Doctor,” he said, feeling strangely foolish. “But you can’t — I mean, you can’t be me too. Can you?” That he could meet himself was, of course, possible, although highly dangerous and deeply frowned upon. He certainly couldn’t have safely sustained the sort of contact these two had been engaged in, even if he’d wanted to. _Wouldn’t you?_ A traitor voice asked him. The thought simply hadn’t occurred to him before — it was impossible — and now that it had his thoughts kept skipping back and replaying that horrifying instant when he’d understood what was before him. But that didn’t mean it was something he’d actually desire — it was just so, just so — so shocking, his mind was reeling, unable to quite accept it.  
  
The one who’s shirt was in such dreadful disarray seemed irritated by his answer. “Well,” he said, “I _am_ the Doctor, but I’m not convinced that I’m _you_.”  
  
The righthand one intervened. “I get the feeling we’re on the verge of a very silly and unhelpful conversation here,” he said, holding his hands out to forestall further argument. “I can’t see it doing us any good, so umm, so lets just take these protestations as read, hmm?”  
  
The other opened his mouth to say something more, but closed it again, thrusting his hands into his pockets, and turning aside. “Yes, I suppose you’re right,” he said, not looking at either of them.  
  
The Doctor found himself unable to phrase any sensible words either. The situation was just too bizarre. His eyes slipped from one to the other, and back again. They stood in postures both familliar and strange. He found that he, too, had put his hands defensively into his pockets, and hastily took them out again. His scalp tingled to see how the one had mussed the other’s hair up, and he couldn’t help imagining how it might have got so — the two of them, pressed together, fingers twisted in loose blond hair; couldn’t stop himself from wondering what it would be to find his own lips pressed against his skin -  
  
He stepped back against the door, retreating from thoughts he didn’t want to have — thoughts thrust on him by this situation — by _them_ having done such things with these replicas of his body, his mannerisms, maybe even his mind. There was a possibility that one could really be him, he forced himself to admit. Not both, but... some future self? Surely not - he could never do such a thing. It was perverted — narcissistic — it-  
  
His thoughts were interupted the one who, thankfully, had taken it upon himself to reduce the tension. “You were wondering what we are,” he was saying. “And I have to say that we don’t know.”  
  
“Now, just a minute,” the other began fiercely.  
  
“Well, we _don’t_ ,” he snapped. “In fact, the only thing we _can_ be sure of is that I would not seem to be the Doctor at all. Although there is apparently a remarkable resemblance.” He gave a tight smile, and the Doctor realised that dispite his outward calm, this copy was no less distressed than the other, or himself, for that matter. In fact, now he actually met the man’s eyes they appeared bloodshot and moist. He felt a stab of pain as he recognised how selfish his own train of thought had become. If they really weren’t him, then their position could be far from ideal.  
  
Compassion warred with the other feelings inside him. He began to understand that there might have been a kind of mutual comfort involved in the scene he had walked in on, and yet...  
  
He shuddered, tried to turn his mind away from it, looking at the floor. But his gaze halted on scattered buttons — buttons just like his own. He closed his eyes at the sight, trying to regain some perspetive, but it only heightened his awareness of the light, fresh scent of his own musk — sharp in his nostrils. And the man with whom he wanted to sympathise was talking to him in his own tones, making use of his own turns of phrase. It made him feel ill. He felt his way to one of the bunks and sat down.  
  
“Well, then,” he said, trying to distract himself. “What is it that you are?”  
  
“We don’t know what _he_ is,” the other one responded, seeming to have calmed a little, and moved to sit a little distance away from the Doctor on the stone bunk.  
  
That was unsettling. He didn’t want to seem rude, but to sit so close to an exact copy of himself — one whose shirt was undone and chest laid bare — was a bit too much just then. The Doctor moved hurriedly to the other bunk.  
  
The double pursed his lips, but forebore to comment. Instead he said: “Yes, well. I — ah — I was examining him before, and umm,” a boyish blush coloured his cheeks, “Well — he’s quite convincing.”  
  
“Examining?” the Doctor felt compelled to ask. “Is that what they’re calling it now?”  
  
He cleared his throat. “Yes, ah, that just sort of - it just sort of happened.”  
  
“I see.”  
  
The copy that stood between them spoke up, diverting the conversation. “And the other thing — I mean, perhaps the more pertinent thing we discovered — about me... as it were,” he said, stumbling over the words, but mastering himself. “Is that unlike the two of you, I don’t remember a damned thing before waking up in this room.”  
  
“And he didn’t even think he was the Doctor,” the more dishevelled double added.  
  
“I just thought I’d lost my memory,” the other agreed, staring at his feet. “And you?” he said looking up. “I suppose you remember everything, do you? No memory gaps at all?”  
  
The Doctor could sense the man pressing for something, although he couldn’t tell what. The other had sat up, alert, at these words, too.  
  
“Well, yes,” the Doctor responded. “Right up until the point when I was knocked out, that is — after that I woke up in a labority somewhere higher up in this building, and - and then they brought me down here.”  
  
“You remember being knocked out,” the man opposite asked, his face intent.  
  
“Hard to forget,” the Doctor said, reacing up to touch the bloody mat of hair where he’d been hit. “I think they were a little rougher than they meant to be. You can see where they did it.” He said, bending his neck so they could see better. “My head’s pounding now.”  
  
The closer of the two came and inspected the spot, standing uncomfortably near. Again a wave of unreality washed over him as he felt the careful, gentle probing of (his own) hands around the bloodied spot. “He’s right, you know” he felt the hair prickle as his own voice echoed from somewhere above his head. “He’s clearly suffered head trauma as a result of a blow with some kind of blunt instrument.” The double crouched down to be on the Doctor’s level. “No dizziness, things like that; signs of concussion?”  
  
The Doctor shook his head. “They had me under for quite a while, I think. I don’t remember being probed for my memories, so I must have been deeply unconscious — I seem to recall that being quite painful. And the blood’s dried. Just hurts a lot, that’s all.”  
  
The other man nodded and straightened again, adopting a jovial tone. “Huh — well, perhaps you are still asleep, and we are merely halucinations in a fever dream, Doctor,” he said, stepping back.  
  
“That’s not funny,” breathed the other one. He gripped the edge of the bunk, his knuckles gone white. He was looking away from both of them.  
  
“What is it?” the Doctor asked.  
  
The response sounded choked. “It’s just that I — that I,” he swallowed, closed his eyes, went on a bit more firmly. “I remember being in a bazaar on Kathanon with Turlough, and then.. and then I was here. I thought because...” he glanced at the other double, then closed his eyes again, “I remember everything else, you see, but not how I got here. I thought whatever they’d done might have addled my brains a bit, but — but you’re right, if they’d knocked me out, there’d have been some injury, and there’s not.” He swept his hands through his hair, across his scalp. “You remember the bazaar? With Turlough?” he asked.  
  
“Yes,” the Doctor replied. “He’d gone off a little ways to buy some peculiar looking fruit — that’s when they got me.”  
  
“Yes,” the other man affirmed. “Yes, I remember the fruit — it was purple.”  
  
The Doctor nodded. “Yes, that’s right. So you remember right up until the point they took me, do you?”  
  
“Yes, yes, I suppose that must have been you — mustn’t it?” He took several deep breaths, and then opened his eyes, looking up. They were red, and shiny, but he seemed to have control of himself once more. “So what do you think I am, then, Doctor?” he asked, his voice steady, even on the last word.  
  
The Doctor, glanced at the other one for something he could say. He couldn’t imagine how fundementally unhinging it must be to learn that none of your memories, your ways of thinking - even your body — were your own. The surety, the fire, even the anger he had felt from the other man seemed to have been thoroughly doused, and the Doctor couldn’t help but think: _what if our positions were reversed, if all my memories and sense of being were really his?_  
  
The other double offered no help, and only shrugged, raising his eyebrows. Of course, there’d be no help there — he and his companion were in the same boat.  
  
Turning back, the Doctor tried to provide an intelligible answer to his question. Perhaps treating it as an intellectual puzzle, detatching the issue from its relation to the other man personally, would help. “You remember the bazaar,” he repeated, “That’s interesting. They must have transferred my memories to you quite recently then.”  
  
“I suppose so,” he responded.  
  
“But not you,” The Doctor said turning to the other one.  
  
“No,” he confirmed.  
  
“I wonder why they would do one and not the other?” he mused.  
  
“But he was awake before I was,” the double with his memories said, frowning. “Perhaps they hadn’t captured you, before they activated him.”  
  
But the other was shaking his head. “No, that doesn’t mean anything. You were here when I woke up.”  
  
“Perhaps they could have transmitted the memories remotely...”  
  
Looking back and forth between the two of them as they debated the point, the Doctor noticed something else. “You’re not exactly the same, you know,” he said.  
  
“What?” they responded in eery unison.  
  
The one opposite turned to look at the one standing. “Honestly it’s a very detailed match — frightening how convincing it is, really, close up.” As his eyes flicked back to the Doctors he closed his mouth on the thought, and a red flush ran across his cheeks again.  
  
“Oh, I’m sure,” the Doctor agreed, trying not to let his mind focus on what that ‘examination’ had involved. “But nevertheless, there _is_ a difference, and not one either of you were likely to see. His hair,” he said, pointing to the one who stood between them, “Is slightly longer than yours.”  
  
With unconscious comic effect, they both reached up to pat their hair, as though it might have changed in the last five minutes. The seated one stood up and moved closer to the other, so as to make a direct comparison.  
  
“Interesting,” he said, after a moment. “You’re right.”  
  
The other was nodding, “Yes, but even more so — look: your hair is almost exactly the same length as his,” he said, gesturing towards the Doctor.  
  
“Hmmm,” the Doctor said. “Well, it may mean something, or it may mean nothing, but it could mean that you were created more recently than he.” Their eyes met.  
  
“The Daleks,” his duplicate breathed.  
  
“Yes,” he replied, then shook his head. “But it couldn’t be — I destroyed their copy of my brain patterns —“  
  
“And they wouldn’t have included anything about the bazaar on Kathanon anyway,” the double filled in.  
  
“But I didn’t destroy the body,” the Doctor said, leaning back against the wall. “It seems stupid, now, but I just didn’t think!”  
  
“You blew up the ship.”  
  
“Well, Stein did, I suppose,” the Doctor admitted. “And we didn’t detect anything docking with it before it went.”  
  
“How much time was there?” asked the double who didn’t share his memories.  
  
“A little,” the Doctor said.  
  
“Some,” agreed the other. “Time to set the self-destruct mechanism, anyway.”  
  
“Hmm,” said the duplicate. “A TARDIS could have done it, you know.”  
  
The Doctor’s lips folded into a thin line. “I don’t believe it. A TARDIS isn’t the only explanation, and I can’t think that any Time Lord — even the Master —“  
  
His duplicate — the Dalek’s duplicate — sat down again. “Well, I can’t see how this would be of benefit to anyone, but a TARDIS could also explain _him_. If whatever got onto the Dalek’s ship could also travel through time, then perhaps you don’t remember anyone copying you because it hasn’t happened yet; and by the time they do, your hair will have grown.”  
  
The Doctor pursed his lips. “There was Kamelion,” he pointed out.  
  
His duplicate glanced at the other. “He’s not Kamelion. He’d have known who he was even if we didn’t, and certainly neither you or I would be willing him to look like us.”  
  
He sighed. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. But it’s not much of an explanation. Hmmm,” he frowned, thinking. “I wonder...” the Doctor stood up and moved closer to the subject under discussion. “Unlikely to be another Dalek duplicate, then? Something our captors acquired earlier in _their_ timeline, but later in mine. Something configured significantly differently so that they couldn’t download my memories, as they did for you.” The Doctor took out his glasses and peered closely at each in turn. “And yet both are equally convincing.” He tapped one of the handles of his glasses against his teeth, thinking.  
  
As they were discussing him, the other, unidentified Doctor-copy had self-consciously folded his arms across his chest. He disliked being examined and discussed in this manner, but he liked even less his inability to contribute. Having done so, however, he happened across something that surprised him. “I say,” he said to himself, “That’s rather odd.”  
  
“What is?” Asked the Doctor.  
  
The copy was feeling and prodding at his chest through his shirt. “Well, it’s just that,” he began. “It’s just that I don’t think there’s something quite right about — err — me. I mean...” He frowned, looking down at himself, and began unbuttoning his shirt. He hadn’t really wanted to know what he was before, as the thought that he was just the image of another man had been rather disquieting; but there was some kind of reassurance in knowing that he was, at least, not the only one. Then to discover something that the other two men would presumably not know about — well, his curiousity got the better of him.  
  
He slipped a hand under the shirt. And there it was: a dent about the size of his thumbnail. “Yes, I’m pretty sure it’s not meant to be like that,” he muttered. As he moved his hand further down his torso, he found another such dent, and another. “No I don’t think it’s supposed to be like that all.”  
  
The Doctor stepped up to have a look himself, reaching out to unbutton the shirt further, and then stopping. “Ah, sorry,” he said at the copy’s raised eyebrows — another expression so familliar from the other side — it had been quite presumptuous of him to move forward like that. “Would you mind...?” he gestured.  
  
The copy nodded. “Yes, I suppose I might as well.” He undid his shirt and pulled down his braces so that he could take it off properly.  
  
When he had done so, they could see that there were four indents in his slender torso. It made the Doctor feel rather uncomfortable to be gazng, now, at his own chest. It made him want to draw his own jacket closer about him, but he resisted the urge, and bent forward to examine the marks. “Interesting,” he said.  
  
“Hmmm,” came a noise from the other side of the copy. He realised his duplication had stood up for a closer look too. “You should come take a look at this,” he said.  
  
“What is it,” the Doctor asked, walking around to look at the man’s back, trying to ignore the look on his face. It was so hard to maintain the distance needed to think clearly about the situation, and yet still treat the other two decently, and not like objects in a puzzle he had to solve.  
  
“Look,” said his duplicate, running a finger along a ragged circular scar.  
  
The other copy jumped at the touch, letting out a yip of surprise, and snapping. “What? What is so bloody interesting about my back then?”  
  
“Sorry,” the duplicate apologised. “I’m not really sure _what_ it is, but —“  
  
“Exit wounds,” said the Doctor.  
  
They turned to look at him.  
  
“Exit wounds,” he repeated, pointing at the peculiar dips in the man’s chest. “Small holes, looks like they’ve been filled in after same fashion — not healed as a Gallifreyan ordinarily would, anyway — you see? And at the back something much more dramatic. Looks like large pieces have been replaced, not just skin, but a fair amount under it too.” He looked between the two of them. “Well, don’t you see? Extensive damage on one side, small wounds on the other...?”  
  
The copy in question had gone pale, and picked his shirt up off the floor again, feeling the need to cover up his scars. “You think I was shot,” he said.  
  
“Yes,” replied the duplicate. “Worrying, isn’t it? Not too promising for your future, Doctor, either.”  
  
“Oh I don’t think so,” the copy replied, his tone bitter. “I’d think it bodes rather well for the _real_ Doctor that I was shot instead of him.”  
  
“Now, look here,” the Doctor began, but was interupted by a familliar grinding warble, and a breeze of displaced air.  
  
They all turned to stare, and said as one: “The TARDIS,” before laughing uneasily.  
  
The TARDIS’ door opened, and Turlough’s head peaked round. “Doctor!” He said with relief as he set eyes on him, and then frowned as he took in the rest of the room. “Doctor...?” he asked, his eyes flicking from one image of the Doctor to the next.  
  
The Doctor decided to be decisive, and deal with Turlough’s confusion later. “No time to explain now,” he said, pushing passed to enter the TARDIS, “We have to get out of here.”  
  
“Well, yes... yes, of course,” Turlough replied, his expression somewhat dazed as three identical Doctors filed past. “Umm,” he said, pulling on the large red lever that closed the door. “Is this a bit like what happened in the Death Zone?” he asked.  
  
“No,” two testy Doctors told him over their shoulders as they began flipping switches and preparing for dematerialisation. The other one stood to one side, as though unsure of his place, or not wanting to get in the way. Turlough supposed that was fair enough. Two Doctors were quite enough to be reaching passed each other and messing with the controls.  
  
One of the Doctors by the control panel looked up at him, frowning. “Turlough, how did you get here?”  
  
“Well, I,” Turlough tried to explain, “I’m not really sure. I followed those two girls that hit you over the head, and—"  
  
“No, no—" The Doctor waved his hand dismissively. “I mean, how did you opperate the TARDIS?”  
  
Turough pursed his lips. “As I was trying to tell you, Doctor, I’m not really sure,” he said. “I think the TARDIS might have been helping me out, I...” both Doctors had stood back from the console, now, and Turlough decided to try a change of tack. “Are you done, then? We’re safely away.”  
  
The Doctor — one of the Doctors — nodded and stuffed his hands into his pockets, looking pre-occupied. “Yes. Well. Away at least.” He looked uncertainly at his other selves, and Turlough perceived that the Doctor was no less confused than he. In fact, he looked a little bit scared. “Turlough,” the Doctor said, breaking in on his thoughts. “I need to ummm...” he looked at his other selves again. “I need to get something sorted,” he said, “You can look after yourself for a bit, hmm?”  
  
“I suppose,” Turlough sighed. He was desparately curious to know what had happened after the Doctor had been abducted from the bazaar, but he could tell he wasn’t going to find out just yet.  
  
Without futher discussion, the Doctors left, the last one turning to look apologetically at him, but saying nothing more.  
  
***  
  
Once alone (well, alone with himselves) in his room, the Doctor collapsed, exhausted, into his armchair. He rubbed his forehead, trying to make sense of things, to figure out what to do next — not really wanting to think at all.  
  
“We’re going to have to tell him something,” one of them said. He didn’t want to open his eyes to see which — didn’t care.  
  
“And soon, I think,” said the other.  
  
“Yes, alright,” said the Doctor, “But not right now. Give me a minute to collect myself.”  
  
He felt a hand on his shoulder, and flinched. Looking up through his fingers he saw it was the second one — the one from his future. He withdrew the hand uncertainly. Looking into the man’s face — his own face — he couldn’t help but realise that whatever his own confusion, it could be nothing to what this other must be feeling — with no past, no identity but the enforced imprint of another man. “I’m sorry,” the Doctor said, “You startled me.”  
  
“Well,” said the other, “Perhaps we all need a little time to adjust.” He sat down on the stool next to the armchair; not touching the Doctor, now, but still uncomfortably close. Uncomfortably? No, not quite. Now that he was sure they weren’t willingly, at least, part of some trap for him, the initial antipathy he had felt for them had waned — but it was a very strange sensation all the same.  
  
The Doctor groaned and closed his eyes again, leaning back in the chair. It was still rather too much to absorb.  
  
When the next touch came he didn’t jump. A gentle hand brushed his hair out of his face. If not for the familliar waft of his own scent, he could have pretended it was another’s hand.  
  
“It’s not that bad,” a voice said, and it was so like his own he could almost pretend it was his own thought. Almost.  
  
“Isn’t it?” he asked the voice. “I can’t think what we’re going to do with you — I’m not sure, I’m not sure I can cope with keeping you here.” As he said it, the reality of the situation washed over him; as though it had been held back by the pressure to figure things out, trying to escape. His deceptively youthful and smooth face pulled together at his brow into deep furrows, and he felt the prick of moisture in his eyes. He took deep steadying breaths, determined not to embarass himself now.  
  
Someone was making soothing noises, smoothing down his hair, pulling him forward into an embrace.  
  
“No,” he struggled, but without much heart to it. “No really, I don’t think...” Lips met his own. Soft, and dry. Comforting—  
  
No. This was wrong. He turned his head away. “Stop it. I’m — I’m okay, really, I just—"  
  
“No, you’re not,” his double replied, his voice sounding rougher now, less controled. “None of us are.” He turned the Doctor’s head back to face him, and when their lips met again, the Doctor didn’t resist. Something about their needing comfort allowed him to do what he wouldn’t have on his own.  
  
The duplicate’s tongue slipped into his mouth, the touch delicate, but sending tremmors through his body. His blood surged and he pulled the other man against him. Feeling the firmness of his muscles, the lithe shape, appreciating for the first time the graceful arch of his own neck. Their mouths separated, and he breathed: “Oh, this is so wrong.”  
  
“Not so very wrong,” said a voice from behind him.  
  
And then he was being held from two sides. Two sets of hands — his hands — running over his body: in his hair, on his shoulder, his thigh, slipping down underneath—  
  
“Oh, nonono,” he cried, as he realised where the fourth hand was headed, grabbing hold of the wrist just as the fingers slipped under the cloth of his trousers, halting it, even though his penis was already growing hard.  
  
Then he felt an electric jolt of sensation course through him as teeth bit down on the sensitive spot on the side of his neck — not hard, but it didn’t have to be. He went limp in the other’s grasp, and the fourth hand was free to roam. “That’s not fair,” he whispered, but with no real force of objection. The light tickle of fine blonde hair on his cheek; the warm wet tongue running up his neck to his ear; the sensation making him groan with pleasure, weakened by bliss — and then the hand, rubbing slowly, teasingly up and down his cock.  
  
He felt a presure from behind now too. Firm as a rod, resting against his buttocks; and he couldn’t suppress a giggle as he wondered if their erections looked the same — possibly not, maybe those who had created his future double hadn’t had chance to do ‘thorough’ meassurements.  
  
“Oh, you like that do you?” the one in front asked, his hand ceasing its rubbing and pulling away. The Doctor let out a pathetic whimper that he would have called back if he could, but he was helpless in their ministrations, now. “Don’t worry, Doctor, I’m not done. I’ve just had the most wonderful idea — I think you’ll like it.”  
  
The Doctor held his duplicate’s dark blue eyes as his already rumpled and half-divested jacket was slipped from his shoulders and tossed aside. He realised something then. This wasn’t narcissism — it was hardly a fantasy he’d dreamt of when alone at night — that wasn’t what was so erotic. It was just so fascinating — so out of his experience. And to be on the outside, looking in on himself, and to know that there was another him, looking right back. To give himself up entirely to another, but to still, in a sense, be in his own control. To be both in power, and powerless.  
  
His duplicate drew the cream v-neck jumper over his head, leaving his hair floating in a cloud of static, until the other him — the one behind — ran his fingers through it, avoiding the scab where he'd been hit, arousing new waves of sensation. He barely noticed as his braces were removed, and his trousers lowered; his head was tilted back in ecstacy again. Then he felt the touch of smooth, moist lips and tongue, and looked down in consternation. What he saw made his breath quicken. It was like having his own lips around his dick. To look down on his own head, and to feel - to watch — it moving on himself — his own tongue’s caress.  
  
“Oh — oh — oh, you can’t,” he cried.  
  
“Yes, he can,” came the voice from behind. He hadn’t noticed the other one move away — he’d been somewhat pre-occupied — but he must have, for he felt the other’s naked penis pressed against him, and the coolness of lubrication. He couldn’t fathom how this memory-less one had found _that_ , but perhaps the TARDIS was being ‘helpful’ again.  
  
There was a little pain as the other man’t penis slipped in from behind, but it was quickly overwhelmed by pleasure. Sandwiched between himself and himself, the Doctor gave into sensation, and lost all pretense at rational thought.  
  
***  
  
Afterwards they lay together in a tangle of arms and legs. The Doctor could no longer tell whose was whose — he only knew the thigh his hand was resting on was not his own. One of the other two had fallen asleep, exhausted; the other was tracing lazy patterns over his left heart. The Doctor tilted his head up, and enjoyed a long, leisurely kiss from someone who knew just how he liked it — the Dalek’s duplicate, he suspected. When their lips parted, the Doctor restd his head on the other’s shoulder and sighed. “You’re going to have to leave, you know.”  
  
“I know,” said the other.  
  
“It doesn’t seem fair on him,” the Doctor said, observing the pockmarket chest of their other companion, confirming to whom he was speaking.  
  
“No, things generally haven’t been fair on him, have they?” the duplicate replied.  
  
“But there’s Turlough.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“He wouldn’t understand.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“It’ll be easier to make something up if you’re not here.”  
  
“I know,” the duplicate agreed. With his free hand he smoothed the sleeping man’s hair. “I’ll look after him. We’ll be alright.”  
  
“Thank you,” said the Doctor.  
  
Shortly afterwards he was asleep too. He had never felt so secure as his did now, lying in his own arms.


End file.
